


What's a Penny Worth

by lurkinglurkerwholurks



Category: Batman - All Media Types
Genre: (Alfred's da was not a nice man), Brief Mention of Past Child Abuse, Bruce Wayne Needs a Hug, Chills, Family Fluff, Fever, Gen, Good Parent Alfred Pennyworth, Headaches & Migraines, Hurt/Comfort, Influenza, POV Alfred Pennyworth, Pre-Batman Bruce Wayne, Scared Bruce Wayne, Sickfic, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Vomiting, Young Bruce Wayne, absolutely saccharine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-29
Updated: 2020-04-29
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:13:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23917345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lurkinglurkerwholurks/pseuds/lurkinglurkerwholurks
Summary: It began, as these things often did, with a sore throat.
Relationships: Alfred Pennyworth & Bruce Wayne
Comments: 70
Kudos: 326





	What's a Penny Worth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [quodthey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/gifts).



> This is a sickfic. Alfred has the flu. He will not be in any respiratory distress or danger, but he will have a fever. I'm just noting this up top in case these things are triggers for anyone right now. (Also, mind the tags for other things.)

It began, as these things often did, with a sore throat. Nothing too egregious or concerning, just a slight swollenness, a mild but irritating ache in the hollows behind the jaw, like one might receive from sleeping with one’s mouth agape. It was easy to ignore, so ignore it Alfred did.

If pressed, Alfred would have said he had his reasons. What was a sore throat to a man who had suffered through trench foot? What was a sore throat in the face of managing a mansion and a teenage ward singly? There was too much to do, too many problems queueing through the triage of his life, to worry about a sore throat.

If Alfred cleared his throat a little more than normal, no one noticed—not him, nor his young charge. Tea might have helped, but Alfred had less time for that small comfort now. Maintaining the house on his own had grown no less onerous over the years, only less daunting as he modified and streamlined and manageable schedule. That schedule, so carefully balanced, was thrown bodily out the window with Bruce’s suspension.

Bruce was lucky it was only a suspension. Or very unlucky, Alfred supposed, that he should be shielded from a suspension until now. With Bruce, it was often a two-faced coin. Sixteen years of service, eight years of solitary care, and Alfred often felt as colt-legged in his care of the last surviving Wayne as the first day he arrived at the Manor. There was no age, from the initial mute years of heartbreak to the current time of hormones and rages, that had not been difficult.

This Bruce had transformed, seemingly overnight, from a quiet, shattered child into a surly teenager. Growing into his bones, Alfred’s da might have said, the way Bruce attempted to throw his weight around now that he had gained some height. He was still a gangly boy, more knees and elbows than any real meat, but the altitude had gone straight to his head. The battles of will were constant and exhausting, and the only meager balm to Alfred’s soul was that Bruce seemed to pit himself against everyone with equal venom. Alfred received no more ire than Bruce’s teachers or classmates—particularly not the ones that Bruce bloodied in schoolyard brawls.

Hence the suspension, caused by one bloodied nose too many to ignore. And hence Alfred’s distraction, as he attempted to run a household and homeschool a stubborn young man who fought him with every breath.

He wasn’t a bad boy, Alfred had to remind himself. There wasn’t a malevolent bone in Bruce Wayne’s body, but there was a darkness there, a gloom that would drown him if he weren’t careful. It was against that destructive nature that Alfred often fought and despaired. He couldn’t recall being that way as a boy. His da would have beat him clean.

Alfred didn’t want to be his da. He failed in that more times that he cared to admit, but he did try.

He was afraid he was failing now. It was mid-afternoon in the second day of Bruce’s homeschooling sentence. The boy was not to engage in recreational activities until his assignments were complete for the day, and yet he continued to test boundaries by delaying in every manner of deed.

Alfred was at his wits’ end, and he felt he hid that fact poorly. He blamed the fatigue that had plagued him all day, one he could not shake or dispel. It hung over him like a heavy thundercloud, darkening his head and soaking his limbs. Some portion, he suspected, was emotional exhaustion from the battle of wills from the past two days. Some, however, was likely a side effect of being old. And he was old. He had been old from the moment his bedside telephone rang on a rainy, bloodspattered night.

His back ached and his neck ached and his soul ached and he was moments from snapping.

“This is stupid,” Bruce grumbled for the fifth time in as many minutes.

“And yet it must be done.”

“Schoolwork is for _school_. If they wanted it done, they should have let me do it there.”

“And they would have, had you not chosen to fight three boys at once in front of a teacher.” This _after_ a week of detention following an ill-advised prank, though Alfred saw nothing humorous about emptying chocolate pudding cups into a classmate’s backpack.

“They deserved it.” Bruce’s voice was low and spoken more to the tabletop than to Alfred. Then, with a huff, he pushed himself to his feet.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Alfred demanded. He could feel his headache, a dull throb this morning that had sharpened into a point, tighten along with his frown.

“‘m thirsty,” Bruce said, but froze when Alfred pointed to his vacated seat.

“You are not to move until you finish that packet.” Alfred filled a glass at the sink and crossed to place it by Bruce’s left hand as the boy sat. “Drink your water, if you need it so desperately, but no more distractions. Do not get another, do not use the restroom, do not visit your room, do not get a light jacket—do not lift your bum from that seat until every line has been answered. Am I understood?”

Bruce’s scowl deepened, elbows firmly planted on the kitchen table in a small act of defiance layered atop his previous displays.

It was rare that Alfred spelled out his commands so clearly, but after two days of these tussles, he was short on patience and grace alike. “Am I understood?” he repeated again, the bite of a drill sergeant in his voice, and waited for Bruce’s mumbled, “Yessir.”

“Once you have finished, you may practice the piano for the next hour, then attend to your reading,” Alfred continued. “I will check on your progress when I return.”

Bruce said something, but Alfred was already passing down the hall with no intention of slowing. A deliberately obtuse question, a snide remark, whatever it was, he didn’t want to know.

Alfred didn’t slow until he was safely in his own room, the door closed at his back, and could stand in the middle of his own quarters and breathe in silence. His room had changed little throughout the years, other than a few added items of sentiment. It was a restricted space, which was to say decently large for a normal home but small by comparison to the rest of the Manor’s sprawling acreage. In it, he was shielded from the rest of the house and simultaneously nestled in it, his soundtrack the cheeping of the bird’s nest outside his window and the gurgling of the pipes over his head.

It was the only place he could call his own.

Alfred had retreated to calm his temper, the plan being to take a few deep breaths before carrying on with his day. But the longer he stood still in the center of the room, the more he felt his own exhaustion weighing down upon him. His throat hurt, and his head hurt, and his eyelids hurt, and his bones felt a hundred years old despite being little more than forty.

He remembered lying down atop the sheets, shoes tucked neatly beneath the bed, with the intention of resting his eyes for five minutes before returning to Bruce.

And that was the last he remembered for some time.

* * *

When Alfred woke again, it was dark, his room black but for the glow of the moon outside his window. He sat up with a gasp and then a groan as his head reacted poorly to the sudden change, vision strobing in the dark with the rush of his pulse. Still, he pushed to his feet and out into the hall, driven by his own embarrassment—and concern for what trouble might have arisen in his absence.

He had to guide himself down the corridor with one hand to the wall, a guide in the night’s gloom and an aid to his balance. His head _hurt_.

“Alfred?” Bruce waited at the end of the hall, pale-faced even in the dark. He stood tall and weedy, but his voice was soft, like that of a little boy’s.

“Master Bruce, I—” Alfred blinked, trying to understand his own actions.

“You’ve been gone all day.” Broad knuckled hands wrung together fretfully. “Are you alright?”

Alright? Of course he was. He must be. Who else was there, if not for he? But the longer he was upright, the more Alfred was aware of the new symptoms that had crept in while he slept. The aches remained, in his throat and head and joints, but new was the heat racing across his eyes and the chills prickling across his back. He felt, suddenly, frozen right to the bone, and his teeth began to chatter.

He winced and hid his eyes as Bruce flipped on the hall light. He could hear the boy’s sharp intake of breath.

“You don’t look so good, Alf.”

“I believe I may be ill,” Alfred was forced to admit, voice creaking like an old fence gate. “I meant merely to rest my eyes a moment. I—”

A wave of dizziness came upon him then, bending him sideways like a slender tree in a stiff breeze. There was a far-off squeak, and then weedy arms around him, bearing him up.

“What,” Bruce panted against him. “Do—Should I—Are you okay? Do we need to go to the hospital?”

Alfred patted Bruce’s shoulder with one shaking hand and got his feet back under himself. “No, no need. I’ll be right as rain. Just a touch lightheaded.”

He believed himself until he took a step away from Bruce’s support and another violent shiver wracked his frame. It was no death hike in the Alps, to be sure, but Alfred felt bloody _rubbish._

“I should cook your dinner,” Alfred murmured, almost to himself. He needed to see that Bruce was fed, and then he could rest.

“You should go to _bed_ , Alfred,” Bruce insisted, reaching for Alfred’s elbow.

“I’ve wasted the entire day,” Alfred fretted as he attempted to move down the hall. “There is laundry that needs to be folded, dusting to be done, dinner to cook, dishes to be washed and dried—”

“It’s nine o’clock at night, Alfred, don’t worry about the dinner. I’ll take care of the rest. Please. Please go to bed.”

It was the _please_ that did it, and the tremor in Bruce’s voice. Alfred could feel himself giving in even before the next shiver took hold of him.

There was a slight delay in the doorway of Alfred’s room as Bruce hesitated to cross the threshold, bound as he was by Alfred’s strict rules of privacy. But soon they were both inside the room, and Alfred was sitting on the edge of his bed before his knees could give way.

“I’ve got it, I’ve got it,” Bruce murmured, crouching before him to unknot Alfred’s tie. “Take off your jacket.”

Soon Alfred was stripped down to his shirtsleeves and trousers, trembling from head to toe as he laid curled in his berth. Bruce bent over him, smelling of teen boy musk and lavender soap, and pressed his lips to Alfred’s forehead.

Alfred made a noise in the back of his throat.

“You’re burning up.” Bruce pulled back, hands gripping the edge of the mattress. “Where do we keep the thermometer?”

Alfred lay in the dark as Bruce went off where he was instructed. This was absurd. He could soldier on through a silly little illness. But when Bruce returned, the thermometer read 103.1 degrees, and it took Alfred too long to mentally convert to Celsius.

“That’s really high, isn’t it? Maybe we should go to the hospital,” Bruce suggested again. “You—oh!”

Only the quickest of reflexes managed to slide the wastepaper bin beneath Alfred’s face as he flung his head over the side of the bed and vomited. Bruce’s hand rubbed small circles between Alfred’s shoulder blades, hesitantly mimicking the care he had received during his own episodes, even as Bruce quietly _hrk_ ed his way through his own sympathetic gags.

Alfred’s face flushed with nausea and shame. Bruce should not be taking care of him. Alfred was the adult, Bruce the child. It was dependent upon _Alfred_ to provide stability and care. This wasn’t the first time he had become ill since the death of the Waynes, but it was the first time he found himself unable to hide his symptoms, and he loathed it.

When the vomiting ceased, Alfred rolled onto his back with a low moan. The clumsy hand on his back and the bin below both disappeared. At the edge of his senses, he could hear the faucet running in the small adjoined WC and the returning sound of a boy heaving.

“Master Bruce?” Alfred rasped.

The WC quieted, and then there was a presence by his bed. “I’m here.”

“Are you ill as well?”

A silence, weighted and flushed, and then, “No. Just a sympathetic puker, I guess.”

Even with his eyes closed, Alfred grimaced. “Please, sir, language.”

“Sorry.”

There was another pause, and then a tentative hand on his shoulder. “If I lift your head, could you drink some of this water?”

Alfred indicated that he could, and then an arm slid under his neck and shoulders, supporting him enough for a hand to bring a glass to his lips. It was an awkward process, Bruce not quite strong enough to lift Alfred without bobbling and Alfred too queasy and feverish to do much himself. But the water felt cool in his throat and washed some of the vile taste from his mouth. Unfortunately, that same drink revisited him not fifteen minutes later.

The rest of the night was much of a blur, with the sordid highlights being the times when Alfred had to lunge for the oft-emptied bin. Between those moments he could remember only snatches—a tremulous Bruce on the phone with Leslie Thompkins, a wet washcloth pressed to his brow, a cool hand to his cheek, and once, singing. The last may have been a fevered hallucination. Mistress Wayne had often sung to her little boy when he felt upset or unwell, with Presley’s “Love Me Tender” as a prominent favorite, but it had been many years since Alfred had heard that tune sung in the Manor.

_Love me tender, love me sweet. Never let me go.  
You have made my life complete, and I love you so._

Whatever portion of his fevered mind had brought about that memory, Alfred thanked it sincerely, and clung to the melody as he drifted from peak to fevered trough.

In the end, Alfred’s illness proved to be violent but short-lived. When he came to himself again, morning light filtered through his curtains and danced softly across the blankets over his feet. He felt scraped clean of all strength, empty and limp as a discarded rag, but as he shifted in his bed, his stomach remained dormant, and the sweat beading his brow promised that the worst was past.

“Mmm, Alf?” a soft voice yawned.

Alfred turned his head to see Bruce sitting by his bed, his young charge still dressed in his clothes from the day before and young face creased with weariness. Seeing true wakefulness on Alfred’s face, Bruce leaned forward, gaze roving anxiously.

“How do you feel?”

“Better,” Alfred said, and was surprised to find his voice a ragged whisper.

“Oh. Hold on.” Bruce’s arm, now familiar and more adept at the maneuver, propped Alfred up enough to take a drink from his bedside glass. “You stopped throwing up a few hours ago, but still go slow.”

Alfred did as he was told and was relieved to feel no answering twinge in the pit of his stomach. He lay back with a sigh and tried to recollect himself.

“Doctor Thompkins thinks it’s a virus,” Bruce said, voice pitched low and rough. “It’s a twenty-four to forty-eight hour thing, so you should be okay, but she gave me signs of things to watch out for. She also said you’re supposed to take it easy even once you feel better, because it’ll wipe you out pretty good.”

Alfred despaired of ridding the boy of his baser Americanisms, but this at least seemed attributable to a direct quote from the good doctor. Besides, he had little energy to correct after the night he had had. Alfred squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think. Waiting duties pestered him, vying for attention with the weakness in his body, but there was one concern that rose to the fore.

“My boy,” he said slowly, “have you been here all night?”

He opened his eyes to see Bruce nod, chin tucked as if braced for a scolding. “I know I’m not supposed to be in here, but I was afraid to move you, and I couldn’t leave. I’m sorry.”

Alfred could hear the little boy in him then, the same that apologized for dirty footprints in the kitchen and disappointments long forgotten. Not a malevolent bone in him, Alfred thought again, but a great capacity for good.

Reaching out from beneath his blanket, Alfred patted Bruce’s cheek. “You’re a good lad, Master Bruce.”

But to his surprise, Bruce flushed unhappily. “I’m not,” the boy said, ducking his head sullenly. “I’m not, and I’m so sorry. I know I’ve been awful, and it stressed you out, and now you’re sick—”

“Master Bruce,” Alfred interrupted, astonished. “You did not make me take ill.”

“No, but it couldn’t have helped,” Bruce muttered. He sighed then, bones collapsing down like a folding chair until his forehead rested against the mattress next to Alfred’s side. “I’m sorry. Sometimes it’s like, like I’m watching someone else be me. I do and say awful things and I don’t know how to stop.”

Now that brought a glimmer of recollection to Alfred, an echo from his own distant youth. He could remember snarling awfully at his dear, dead mother, words he could scarcely control and flung with the force of a grenade. He could remember the wild urge to pick fights, to route anyone who tried to intrude. And he’d had friends, siblings, parents, and a relatively happy childhood to cushion his worst urges. As unpleasant as Bruce’s teenage years were for Alfred, he wondered now what they were like for Bruce.

Alfred sighed and cupped the back of Bruce’s head, palm resting gently atop goose-down hair. “I know, my lad, I know.”

Half against his own will, Alfred’s thumb stroked the curve of Bruce’s skull, through soft strands and down the arc of his neck. He was such a little boy still, and soon he would be a man, grown and off to find his own destiny, with no use for the dessicated old manservant of his youth. Alfred ached at the thought.

“Thank you,” he murmured to the downturned head, “for taking such good care of me.”

Bruce’s face lifted from the bed then, and Alfred’s hand felt his loss as it returned to his side.

“Of course,” Bruce said heatedly, two bright spots appearing on his cheeks. Alfred wondered at them, until he continued, “Of course, Alf. You and me, we’re… I mean… You would’ve… You deserve it. And I’m gonna keep taking care of you, too.”

Bruce squared his shoulders then, tightening his jaw in a way that rarely meant well, but in this miraculous moment seemed to be for Alfred’s benefit. “Dr. Thompkins says you have to take it easy, so you’re going to rest, and I’m going to take care of you. I’ll take care of the chores and everything, so don’t you worry, alright?”

Alfred fought to keep his lips from twitching fondly as he nodded. “As you say, Master Bruce.”

“Good.” Bruce gave another firm nod, then pushed to his feet. “I’m going to make you soup—from a can, don’t worry,” he assured before Alfred could protest, “and then I’ll bring my homework in here while you sleep, just in case you need anything.”

He said it so firmly, but then snuck a hesitant peek down at Alfred once finished. “Is… is that okay?”

It was, in fact, okay. The soup was a bit singed, and Alfred hadn’t the appetite to finish it all, but he soon found himself fed and tucked back in by a fussing teen boy with anxious hands. With food on his stomach for the first time in hours, Alfred felt himself drifting, but he was awake enough to answer when Bruce hesitantly lifted his required reading— _Persuasion_ by Jane Austen—for inspection.

“Would… I could read to you, if you’d like,” Bruce offered shyly.

Alfred, who had no voice for tunes, had often turned to literature to soothe his young ward. The significance behind the gesture did not escape him now.

“That would be lovely,” Alfred replied, and closed his eyes to rest.

As he sunk into slumber, Alfred found the soothing cadence of Miss Austen’s works mixing with a half-remembered melody to carry him off to dreamland. And he was grateful, in the quiet place inside him, that for all he had done wrong in raising this changeling child, he appeared to have done something right as well.

_Love me tender, love me true. Tell me you are mine. I’ll be yours through all the years, till the end of time._

**Author's Note:**

> I've decided that it was Alfred's grandfather who served the Waynes and Alfred's da was a mean old man.


End file.
